Winter intensive grazing

Gisborne District Council's Tairawhiti Resource Management Plan (TRMP) includes rules if you intensively graze or break feed animals on crops or pasture between 1 May and 30 September.

What are the rules?

If you're already intensively farming, you can continue to farm without a resource consent but you need to submit a Farm Environment Plan to us before 1 May 2021.

Rainfall can wash sediment, nutrients and faecal bacteria from grazed paddocks into waterways.

You need to have a buffer area between grazed paddocks and waterways to help trap run-off and keep the water clean. Stock must be excluded from:

• 5 metres from the wet edge of all permanent and intermittent streams. • 5 metres from the edge of wetlands and lakes. • 10 metres from the edge of outstanding waterbodies or regionally significant wetlands see sections G17 and G18 of the TRMP.

If the slope of the land is greater than 15 degrees, stock must be excluded from 10 metres from the wet edge of any stream or river beds, all lakes and the edge of all wetlands.

From 1 July 2019 all streams and rivers that are crossed by as part of the intensively farmed stock activity shall be bridged or culverted, expect for when crossings are supervised, stock are driven in one continuous movement or they occur less than once a week.

Good grazing practices

When setting up paddocks for winter

• Choose paddocks away from waterways to plant your feed crops.• Identify swales, leave them unploughed as a grassed waterway and temporarily fence them off duringwinter grazing.• Locate and size buffer strips on a site-by-site basis. Locate larger buffers around gullies and swaleswhere most run-off flows from.• Put baleage in the paddock before soil becomes too wet so vehicles don’t damage the ground.

Cultivation

• Keep plough lines at least 5 metres back from streams on flat land and 10-15 metres back on slopesmore than 7 degrees• Cultivate crops along the contour lines on sloping land to slow run-off and reduce down-slope soil loss.

Nutrient management

• Soil test your paddocks to gauge the right fertiliser requirements for crop and soil type.• Prepare a nutrient budget to understand how nutrients are lost from your current farming system.

Once stock are in the paddock

• Graze less risky areas of the paddock first and graze towards more risky areas – which could mean break feeding towards the waterway.• Fence stock off land that has already been grazed.• Provide transportable troughs for drinking water.